You Must Set Forth at Dawn (64 page)

It was not an original ploy. “Unacknowledged” children already long in the tooth do have a habit of turning up after the death of a prominent figure; the variant here was that the confectioners of the sob story did not even wait for my passing away! Equally unoriginal, but of mind-numbing diabolism, was the squalid catalogue of attributed crimes that were indeed based on actualities— only they belonged, right down to the most sordid detail, to Major R.O.A. Salawu, even as set out in the police charges against him.

Beneath my outward insouciance—this must be admitted—the contents of that journal drilled a corrosive hole into the most secretive core of my being. I had to improvise, go through processes of trial and error—from immersion in overwhelming symphonic music that drowned out the voices in my head to spells of meditation, those exercises that stood me in such good stead in prison solitary—to counter the threatened erosion of my combative consciousness. My outer shrug was a lie; we had work to do, and others needed the impervious confidence of my leadership. For the sake of the opposition, as well as for my family, I had to hide the suppurating wound that ate into my vital organs. Several nights I lay awake, wondering if any human psyche was really equipped with an internal armor strong enough to protect the essence of his being against a seepage of such venomous intensity.

Yes, those publications did succeed in depriving me of several nights of my accustomed sleep and even ate into my waking preoccupations. My concentration would trail off occasionally in the midst of a discussion, as a phrase in a tract of irredeemable vileness flashed across my mind. While I was reading a book, minutes would sweep by—five, ten, maybe fifteen, or more—and I would find myself still on the same page, unable to recall what lines I had read, what the book itself was that I held in my hand. Over and over again this would happen until I gave up after hours of zero absorption.

I was not unaccustomed to gossip, defamation, and slander. I doubt very much if any people in the world can match the conglomeration called Nigeria in the propensity of its inhabitants toward the game of character denigration; it is all part of a justly remarked-upon creative energy, unfortunately much of it of a negative, even self-destructive temper. This brand of the abuse of inventive energy has driven many valuable individuals away from any form of civic commitment or public service. In this publication, however, the most tenuous restraints had been jettisoned. A total stranger, a doppelgänger with an odious smirk, was being invented between the lurid pages, and I was swamped by this illicit being, this fake persona who dispensed spores of corruption guaranteed to percolate through the most protective layers of society.

Group therapy sessions, so favored in the United States, represent for me the ultimate in the abject abandonment of human dignity, self-respect, and the human will, a negation of that very private space within which, declares my temperament, the deepest wounds are healed. But then it must be understood that I have a deep contempt for much that goes under the name of psychiatric practice, especially in the United States. “I have an appointment with my therapist”—and off he/she goes for a weekly, twice-, thrice-weekly session with a shrink. Obviously these remarks do not apply to those genuinely in need, victims of diagnosed mental illnesses and disturbances. Among my acquaintances, alas, are several who make a fashionable pastime, or simply a very chic consumptive habit—like attending wine-tasting sessions—out of viable modes of treatment for psychiatric disorders. So how is it that I have caught myself wondering why no psychiatrist appears to have considered a particular area in which I have felt that I could do with some serious counseling myself, and of the group variety? For this is the stark truth: during that dark period, I sometimes felt that perhaps I could have done with a group session over this one experience: slander! Forget the dismissive shrug of the shoulders, the snarl of genuine contempt for the purveyors of degrading fantasies; something sticks to the soul and succeeds in dragging down the spirit, intermittently and sometimes for prolonged spells.

I understand why the word “smear” is such a preferred expression— yes, one feels smeared, dirtied, polluted. Feeling pure and uncontaminated within is all very well, but anyone who has ever accidentally stepped into dog excrement—a guaranteed event in some neighborhoods of New York—knows that you can scrape your shoes as much as you like against the pavement, step deliberately into puddles, and then rub the soles against tarmac, gravel, patches of grass, even mud; that peculiar, nauseous odor of
dog shit
simply never disappears—or, what really matters, you feel it never does! The smell hangs around you or—again this is what matters—you are convinced that it does. Even after you have finally reached home, taken your shoes off, and left them outside, the sense of a foul stench continues to dog you. And of course as you walk alongside or share public spaces with others, the question surfaces—can they
smell
you?

Slander is very much in that vein. Even among colleagues and acquaintances professing the usual trust and respect—well, they have heard, of course, but do they believe? When they say “Oh, no one believes a word of that,” are they really thinking “Hmm, the dirty hypocrite, exposed at last”? Maybe, after all, a few sessions among those theragroupies would have helped. With this particular affliction, I believe, there is need for a forum where one can compare notes. No holding of hands in a circle, no group meditation, none of the “confessional” attitude, no passivity roles in the face of simulated assaults—no, none of that! Simply an orgy of music and poetry, lots of wine—very robust— the favorite food of each participant, video clips of libelers undergoing mild forms of social censure, such as being flayed alive, slowly roasted over an open fire, tarred and feathered, publicly castrated, or simply splayed over an anthill from dawn to dusk under an unblinking sun, while the more energetic among the victims are provided with air guns and darts, for target practice on the effigies and photographs of such vile social malcontents. Brushes, pots of paint, and broad canvases for some action painting should, of course, be provided for the more artistically minded.

Within the opposition, a few voices did propose a campaign of retaliation, targeting some of the more notorious props of the regime, such as Thomas Ikimi, the minister for foreign affairs, and Walter Ofonagoro, the minister of information. It was pointless going after the principal himself—no mind was equipped with the fiendish imagination that could invent crimes to beggar the reality of atrocities committed by the innermost core of the Abacha regime. I shot down the idea, however. The mental and practical energies that would be expended on such sterile activities were best reserved for psyching ourselves up for the irreversible moment when—or if—we actually committed to armed struggle. We never did reach that moment, but, as the Bard said,
The readiness is all!

Requiem for an Ecowarrior

HE CALLS UPON THAT STATE OF READINESS WERE NOT SLOW IN COMING, but none equaled the brutal clamor of the event of November 10, 1995, an event that addressed the world in the most lacerating accent yet, even by the savage register of General Sani Abacha's rule. The event was primarily designed for the Nigerian populace—it warned, very simply, that a new force had come into being, a force that admitted no constraints or scruples, was contemptuous of world opinion, and would remain deaf to the counsel of the most revered. This event was therefore timed to make the maximum impact on global awareness, to serve notice to political watchers, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other busybodies that the threshold for the impunity of power had been lowered below their meddlesome projections. The United Nations felt sufficiently exercised to send a commission of inquiry after the event; its members were treated with derision by Abacha's government, most directly and publicly by the minister for foreign affairs, Chief Thomas Ikimi, who proceeded to lecture them on the limits of their mission. For most of us in the opposition—certainly for me—the state murder of Ken Saro-wiwa and his eight companions signaled the futility, indeed the death, of dialogue.

The trial of the Ogoni Nine, right from the beginning, was a proceeding that would be farcical but for its lethal implications. The defense lawyers, led by Gani Fawehinmi, had been openly taunted, subjected to indignities—on orders—harassed, and even roughed up as they arrived for each day's hearing. Stricken by remorse, one state witness had confessed on videotape that he and others had been offered lavish inducements to perjure themselves and were coached on what evidence to give—especially against Ken Saro-wiwa. The hanging judge Justice Ibrahim Auta dismissed this damning rebuttal of the state's case as irrelevant. Frustrated and unwilling to continue to be counted as part of a deadly charade, the defense lawyers withdrew—albeit controversially—leaving the accused to conduct their own defense. A travesty of justice could now proceed, unimpeded by and indifferent to the presence of international observers, a number of whom were, in their turn, barred from future proceedings. Every form of protest or intervention merely served to feed the arrogance of power. The spectacle played out its tragicomic script right on to the designated end.

The verdict—guilty—was fully expected. Very few individuals, however, believed that the sentence—death by hanging—would ever be carried out. I was not among the optimists. Power had mounted the head of the dictator; it needed its periodic nourishment in blood.

KEN HAD SOUGHT me out years before in Abeokuta, perhaps in 1989, to seek support for his Ogoni Bill of Rights—the inception of a structured struggle by the people of a devastated, oil-soaked land. The Ogoni remain one of those minority people in the delta region in the South with a distinct history, language, and culture. Oil prospecting and extraction had doomed their land and impoverished their people, but conferred—and still confer!—on the rest of the nation, especially the military and its business conduits, limitless wealth from the proceeds of the very agent of their misery. The bill was a manifesto for Ogoni social, cultural, and economic justice. Seeking my voice on behalf of that cause, Ken came accompanied by a small delegation that included his son, Ken Junior. Intense, committed, and organized, they were demanding reparations for past abuse, neglect, and state robbery, as well as a degree of political autonomy.

I needed no persuasion. How many times had I flown over the Niger Delta—the main oil-prospecting part of the nation—and seen the landscape dotted with flues that burned night and day, several of them for decades? Even before Ken's visit, I had contributed to a special feature in
The Guardian
(Nigerian) on the destruction of Ogoni land by the oil companies, the degradation of ancient farmlands, the pollution of fishing ponds, and the poisoning of the very air. Saro-wiwa's struggle was thus joined to mine within that most fundamental condition of social being that I summarize quite simply as
justice.

In the process of that struggle and its factional degeneration, four Ogoni chiefs had been murdered, denounced as collaborators with the military government and the oil companies. These were brutal, horrendous killings, totally indefensible. To the extent that the murders had been committed by Ogoni youth militants, members of MOSOP—the Movement for the Salvation of the Ogoni Peoples—who owed loyalty to Ken Saro-wiwa, their leader, who had failed to condemn the murders in the most rigorous language, Ken could be assailed with a measure of
moral
responsibility. But to accuse him of complicity, direct or indirect, was an act of cynical opportunism. To try him and his companions in a special “tribunal,” a military contrivance albeit with a civilian judge as its figurehead chairman, then convict them on the “evidence” placed before the nation, was an act by minds totally devoid of all conscience, perhaps steeped in a diabolism that required human sacrifice. Finally, to proceed to hang those victims, even before they had exhausted all avenues of appeal open to them within the provisions of the decree that established the “judicial process,” was a step that no sensible person ever thought possible—from the Ogoni infant in his village to the sage Nelson Mandela. Mandela arrived at the Auckland airport beaming with confidence and dismissing the anxious questions of journalists with a jovial wave of the hand. Had Abacha not personally assured him, in a telephone exchange, that he would not execute those men? After the deed, Mandela would give vent to his outrage in these unforgettable words: “General Sani Abacha is sitting on a volcano and I am going to make sure that it blows up under him.”

I was due in Japan, but not for a number of days. I left early and detoured to Auckland where the Commonwealth heads of state were gathering for their biannual summit, and it was clear that they alone, at that stage, still commanded the weight of voices that might save nine innocent men from the gallows. My message to them was insistent, desperate, and even strident: “Only strong threats will save these lives, strong threats backed by unmistakable indications that such threats will be enforced if the sentence is carried out!” Occasionally I encountered a member of the governmental delegations who listened and thought hard and deep, as if resolved to influence attitudes within his delegation or the routine caucuses. I would then walk back onto Auckland's sunlit streets, desperately plucking courage from such meager signs.

Today, even after the tragic denouement, I am mildly surprised to find that it is not anger or bitterness I feel as my mind traverses the few years since then—only sadness, tinged of course with renewed pain, as I recall the responses of those leaders. In the main, very few of these heads of state of the Commonwealth—former colonies of Great Britain, from Canada through Asia and Africa to Australia—despite their varied experiences of humanity, had ever encountered, except in history books, the likes of Sani Abacha. Maybe even now they still believe that Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and others were all mutants, perhaps created by undetected spores that spilled out of some secret Chernobyl, or by the singular gas seepage from our neighboring Cameroon's Lake Nyos that killed, in the 1980s, hundreds of sleeping victims between night and dawn. These leaders conveniently forgot the lesson of Idi Amin Dada within their own club of nations. The majority of their foreign ministers, ambassadors, advisers, political analysts, and so forth were versed in bloodless briefings, attuned to cynical lobbies, cocktail and diplomatic reception circuits where the formal attire is camouflage for both viper and dove, and the garb of atrocities is shed at the door with a crested visiting card. The rest, like the rulers they served, were potential clones of the Abacha breed and simply wondered what the fuss was all about.

I
knew
Sani Abacha—no, not personally, though we had met twice. It was simply his type that I knew intimately, a species that I had studied closely, lectured and written about. I did not share the confidence of the others, but I was hopeful—at least at the start. And it was just as well. We were all doomed to be eviscerated by an invisible blade wielded by a psychopath from a place called Abuja. My only saving grace was that I had already felt its thrust, long before the noose tightened around Kenule's neck.

Even now, I still relive those moments of intense isolation that leave you truly “spaced out”—as in spinning in outer space—an alien among supportive, courteous mortals, a feeling that clings to you, knowing that, among the teeming population of that island, you are one of the mere handful of creatures—no more than two or three, one of whom was Ken's son—who know with absolute certainty that a mass murder is about to be committed, yet you are powerless to stop it or persuade anyone to believe you. My final moment of certitude came from a chance crossing of paths.

On the streets of Auckland, where I exorcised my restlessness and frustration with incessant walking between appointments, a car drew up with young Ken, the son of the condemned man, and some workers from the Body Shop and other NGOs who were looking after him. Ken leaped out, holding a cyclostyled statement from Shell, the oil company. If ever there was a scripted form of Pontius Pilate washing his hands before handing Christ over to his executioners, this would be its very corporate equivalent! If anything untoward happened to the Ogoni Nine, the statement declared, others were to blame—the agitators whose aggressive tactics only hardened the mood of the military regime and undid all the careful work of silent diplomacy being undertaken by their company, and well-meaning others.

Yes,
we
were to blame, not Shell! Not the oil-exploration companies. Not the military regime, its corporate allies, its kangaroo courts, but us! I handed back this tract of self-exoneration, company unctuousness, and—it seemed clear to me—accessory knowledge. In my distraction, I thought I had spoken aloud, and flagellated myself long afterward for an outburst that lacked consideration for the son's presence. But he assured me much later that I had the sequence of events all wrong. For what I thought I had blurted out without thinking was “He's dead. They've decided to hang them. This statement— Shell knows of the decision already.” Even today, however, the words still ring in my head as I thought I had heard them, clear as the tolling of a funeral bell.

Walking myself into a state of total exhaustion from a sweaty pace around the humid streets of Auckland, mostly along the harbor, I began to feel somewhat dizzy. Recognizing why—I had had only my usual morning espresso that day—I entered a restaurant off the beaten track, where I attempted to stuff my insides but again mostly drank. Then, instead of returning to my hotel, I went to the improvised office of the Body Shop. It was abandoned; the volunteers were between hotels, waylaying and canvassing whatever delegates they could. I knew why I remained there in that abandoned office—it was to await the news. I did not wish to be found, did not wish to be invited to join in canvassing one more statesman or delegate. I returned to my hotel room only when it was late and news of the confirmation of sentence by Abacha's military ruling council had been formally announced.

Now I had only one thought: to get out of New Zealand! I had an engagement in Japan—a gathering of Nobel laureates—but we were not expected for two more days. That was just too bad. I sent a message but did not really care whether or not I was met, or if I upset the protocols that appear to be encoded in the national genes of the Japanese. I had only one goal in mind—to escape the island that would shortly host a wake for complacent heads of state, their political advisers, and their pundits. They would fashion statements of indignation and perform other accustomed rites of assaulted dignity. That would be their problem; it was no longer mine. The statement from Shell may not have been a death warrant, but it was so clearly a death certificate that I no longer thought of Ken as being in the world of the living, and I had no wish to encounter politicians and statesmen after the event. Above all, I most certainly did not wish to speak to the press. “So what is your view on these executions, Mr. Soyinka?” Finally, I did not wish to witness the agony of a son when the now-inevitable hole in his life yawned before him. All of this sent me looking for the next plane out of Auckland heading in the direction of Tokyo, where I knew I would have a clear two days alone before I was again obliged to face the world.

I only obtained relief from this irrational dread of being pursued when the plane was airborne and out of New Zealand airspace. After arriving in Tokyo, ensconced in a temporary suite by my polite hosts, I awaited the expected.

IT CAME IN THE MORNING, in the form of a young journalist, ushered into my suite by a geisha-attired woman who had been specially assigned to look after me, sitting just outside my room at all times—I later discovered—as if my hosts from the
shimbun,
the publishing house, feared that I might go into a depression, do some kind of harm to myself. Ken Saro-wiwa and his eight companions, the young man said, had been hanged at Port Harcourt prison, shortly after their appeal was rejected by the Supreme Military Council of Sani Abacha.